Wednesday, 12 May 2010

Monstrous Compromise In The Name Of 'Cultural Sensitivity'

Sometimes the phrase ‘multiculti madness’ is used too often. But I can’t think of a better term for Lakshmi Anantnarayan’s mind-blowing column in CiF.

The sub-heading reads:

Paediatricians have erred by suggesting that 'nicking' female genitalia should be allowed as a cultural compromise.

W...T...F....F?!?

At the end of last month, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a revised policy statement on female genital mutilation (FGM) called "ritual genital cutting of female minors," suggesting that the federal and state law in the US should permit paediatricians to offer a ritual "nick" of girls' genitalia as a compromise to appease the cultural needs of their immigrant clients.

Ahhh, appeasement. The progressives' favourite word...

International women's rights organisations from the US, Africa, and Europe were quick to respond to this outrageous proposition calling on the AAP to retract its 2010 statement and revert back to its much stronger 1998 statement on the subject.

That's showing admirable restraint, I feel. I'd have been calling for a rusty, dull razor, some twine and some dirty, scummy water....

The AAP's response, however, has thus far been underwhelming and they continue to justify this latest position on three grounds:

"Nicking" is a minor procedure equivalent to a pin prick or ear piercing and has no harmful health consequences.

The "nick" is a "compromise" that could prevent families from performing more severe forms of FGM on their daughters

In other words 'Omg! Omg! We can't upset teh minorities! I can haz fudge, plse?'

A 2008 statement on FGM adopted by 10 prominent UN agencies clearly states that, "the guiding principles for considering genital practices as FGM should be those of human rights, including the right to health, the rights of children and the right to nondiscrimination on the basis of sex."

You'd think that would suffice for all but the most barkingly-insane trendy lefty, but no.

How come these people can pass doctor's exams anyway? Is that old 'First, do no harm...' bit now translated as 'First, kowtow to the primitive belief systems of your non-white clients...' or something?

According to a member of the AAP's bioethics committee, the intention behind the revised 2010 policy is to issue a "statement on safety in a culturally sensitive context".

Well, you can shove that as far up your normally-sized and un-mutilated fanny as far as you can get it, chum!

The new policy justifies the shift from the 1998 terminology of "female genital mutilation" to "female genital cutting (FGC) or ritual genital cutting, by claiming that the former is "culturally insensitive language".

*grinds teeth*

Dear god, these people need a brisk slapping to shake them out of their ivory towers and bring them down to the reality of just what those initials stand for. I'd link to some of the videos out there, but they are truly, utterly stomach turning and some of you may be reading this at brakfast...

It further validates paediatricians' offer to "nick" girls genitalia to "satisfy cultural requirements". This raises the question of what culture is being talked about and who are the gatekeepers of this culture that are being appeased – and what is the so-called "cultural identity" being preserved.

Quite.

The AAP must retract its statement.

The AAP needs to be held down by some tribal elders and have that statement forcibly retracted for them....

The "nick" idea AFAIK started in Italy and I believe came from a desire to do good by appeasing these loons who want to (and let's face it - this what it's about desex females).

Much though I am zero-tolerance on such evil idiots I also see where that was coming from. Misguided, yes, but the heart was in the right place. The head wasn't but...

Look. It really is this simple. What we have here is wackademics commenting on a generalised view of female sexuality which is so off from Western culture as to be totally incommensurable. I am not surprised this came from America because the last couple of years have seen increasing numbers of black, female academics in the socialist "sciences" praising FGM as a "culturally authentic rite of passage" and all that jazz.

That's the end game of rad-fem. Just like the commies who promised heaven on earth and then starved the masses the rad-fems want to cut clitorises. You almost couldn't make it up yet it is that very unbelievability that allows them to get away with it.

Well, that and... This horrendous practise is carried out primarily by women. That gives the rad-fems their let out. Because if it was men doing it then they would be shouting to the rafters but it ain't so they are more concerned about banning Page 3 because of course anything women do is good and anything men do is evil.

I have no idea how to objectify sexual pleasure but it occurs to me that having sex with a woman who is actually willingly enjoying the experience is better all round. The very idea of sex with someone who's genitals have been hideously carved-up so that sex becomes a grim ordeal for them is so far off my radar set it's orbiting Jupiter.

Essentially de-sexing girls is about social control which is why (though not limited to) it is a practise that chimes neatly with Islam.

I did say "objectify" and I was being naughty because the rad-fems go mental over the "objectification of women" that is porn but I didn't mean it in that sense. I meant it in terms of being "objective". And as much as you can be objective about sex then surely sex with someone who's also having fun is more fun for you too. Surely.

The most severe form of FGM - infibulation - means that foreplay consists of opening her up with a knife. That is barbarism. There is no other word for it. They might think that Nick here is thoroughly immoral for my fornications (and they do because this is a chastity device - make sex horrible and they won't want to do it) but I never had to take a blade to what was left of her labia.

One last point. In the mid C19th there was a Texan gynaecologist who removed clitorises as a "cure" for frigidity. He was roundly regarded as a dangerous quack. We have made such progress have we not?

Uneffffin believable, what on earth is the 'civilised' world coming to...The people (if I can term them that?) that are saying this really should be given a 'slight ' nick to the femoral artery and left in a desert 50 miles from 'civilisation'..

One serious problem that confuses this issue is that infant male genital mutilation is still allowed, and in the USA still widely practised. Unless you've got a general principle that young peoples' sexual organs are not their parents' property- however much those parents may want to think otherwise- you're going to be stuck with this. I abhor this decision and considered doing a blog myself about it, but it is hard to concentrate purely on protecting girls (utterly worthy as it is) when people who have taken the Hippocratic Oath still pile up excised foreskins with gay abandon.

Male mutilation is still practised in our societies for two reasons- firstly because of Victorian era health crankery (it was supposed to cure a pot pourri of diseases which are no longer even considered to exist, of the "nervous excitation of the humors" variety, and out of "cultural sensitivity" to Jews, which is just another longer-standing political correctness.

As a libertarian, I believe that it is the duty of the law to clearly preserve the basic rights of those who cannot protect themselves due to being dependants; babies and young children, the mentally ill and disabled, the senile and the elderly. It's right for us to abominate female mutilation, but hypocritical to not be equally outraged at people whose first inclination upon looking at a healthy baby boy is to mutilate his cock.

Ian,For the record the AAP has no actual position on routine infant circumcision. And undoubtedly that is what is Rick-rolling this through. Note the CiF article goes on and on about gender equality despite this not being an equality issue but purely one of vile assault. In essence I suspect that the equality argument means they can't ban FGM without embarrassing themselves or banning RIC for males.

I shall add one more thing. I might have given the impression inmy earlier comment that I thought this idea was vaguely wee-meaning but dumb. I retract that. I do for a very simple reason. The AAP statement mentioned "cultural sensitivity". Frankly, I couldn't give a flying one about that. Clitoral sensitivity, yes but cultures don't have nerve endings. Cultures can't be hurt and they don't have rights. Does a Seventh Day Adventist or a Green have rights? Yup, do their belief systems? You're havin' a larf! Not even my vaguely humanist classical liberalism has "rights".

Oh, and another thing. The fundamental reason certain Islamic societies are into FGM is sexist - against blokes. A woman has to be owned and her sexuality controlled otherwise who knows what might happen? This is all down to Muhammed who couldn't keep his pecker in his robes for five consecutive minutes.

There will be women all across those cultures which still practice this butchery howling with rage. Where a growing and highly organised movement has developed amongst the women who "ought to" do it or have had it done to them to say No, no more, it stops now with us, stupid, over-privileged, romanticising so-called feminists in the first world come up with this?! Stop reading effing sisterhood textbooks and listen to the women who know.

In a rational polity this would mean not objecting to Indian (or indeed any other) women wearing saris or not getting Nick Griffinish about the local Chinese take-away.

"Cultural Sensitivity" is not walking into a particular synagogue that you wanna see because it has nice stained glass whilst munching a bacon butty. I think we can all agree that would be the act of an ignoramus.

"Cultural sensitivity" though does not include a level of toleration for sexual mutilation. The AAP was truly disingenuous when it compared their FGM-lite to ear-piercing. Why? The clue is in the "P". All medicine must be carried out with (as far as possible) informed consent. Paediatrics is difficult here. I have met a few peads and was generally deeply impressed by the clever extent to which they would speak to children about their treatment options as candidly as possible.

Pretty much by definition a pre-pubescent child cannot consent to a medically unneeded procedure carried out on genitals she is years away from learning to use.

Ear piercing tends to be something done with informed consent by teenagers. Oh, and it involves the ears and not the vulva. And if you don't know the difference between those then you really wasted your time at Med School.

Anyway, back to "cultural sensitivity". I am no fan of the Chinese Communists but give them their "stopped clocks" due they ended the barbarism of foot-binding. This can be stopped and it should be and "cultural sensitivity" be buggered because as I said at the start of this comment there is being sensitive to other cultures and there is tolerating barbarism and barbarism is not culture.

Yup, I said it. Yes, there are culture other than my own. Central Europeans, for example, tend to have a Christmas dinner of carp and not turkey. The Germans boast a fine tradition of writing symphonies but are terrible with jokes. Indian taxi drivers tend to have a shrine to Ganesh on the dashboard next to the sat-nav. These are all part of our global rich tapestry. As is the Japanese considering it uncouth to eat in the street. (Am I sounding like an HSBC ad here?) but my point is that is cultural difference that is worthwhile.

Taking a scalpel to a healthy young girl's genitals without her consent (but with the consent of "culture") isn't. That is not a cultural difference because it is about the absence of culture or as it used to be called being a complete barbarian.

The AAP is making the standard multi-culti mistake of regarding everything as culture. Well, I'm English but of largely Scandinavian ancestry? Am I allowed to hit the Archbishop of York with an axe and steal the plate and then roger some nuns on the way out? No.

I can read, I can write, add-up have read like books and stuff and I am civilized.

FGM is barbarism. And that is all. It is that simple. It is not a cultural difference because it is not culture. Culture is the music of Bach or Kylie, the 1001 Nights, a jalfrezi. Culture is fun. Taking a knife to a girl's genitals is not fun unless you are a barbarian. And we ought to see it like that.

Because we are better than the barbarians. And note that is a very inclusive "we". It is not just the culture of the West that abhors this barbarism but, by definition, all culture worth a toss.

Some here are more familiar with the Koran than I am.Can someone tell me if this monsterous practice is mentioned or allowed in there anywhere?If not it is just another barbaric stone age tribal practice that enforces male property rights and domination over women (and I dont care that it is women doing it to women, they are obviously being coersed by their menfolk)and which we can well see the back of, like Sati and foot binding.Otherwise these clowns will be giving headhunting the er, nod next. But it was only a little nick officer?!!

I'm threadjacking. This is a post falling off your front page and what I really want to say about this (and related) issues will sit fairer on the front page of CCinZ than as a comment in the late teens on your blog. Sorry. It will not happen again.

RAB,Short version. The Qu'ran doesn't mention FGM (or indeed male circumcision). There is though an hadith in which the prophet advises "a circumciser of girls" not to "cut too deeply". But Islam is not just the Qu'ran or Hadith or Sunna but a tradition and though FGM is pre-Islamic it is a tradition that resonates with the Islamic view of the role of women. Essentially what I'm saying is that whilst Islam doesn't doesn't prescribe this horror it finds it quite easy not to proscribe it as well. Pretty much all religious traditions are not tabula rasa but draw on pre-existing cultural elements so where Islam planted it's flag and where they did FGM it stayed and where it planted it's flag and they didn't it wasn't introduced. Islam's moral failure here is essentially one of omission not commission and it is profoundly understandable in terms of Islam's general outlook on women, sex and morality in general.

Let us compare and contrast two rather religious countries. In Saudi the birds walk around wearing the contents of a clearance sale in an outdoor pursuits shop in Keswick. In Brazil they wear almost nothing Both religious traditions are down on fornication but whereas Catholicism is down on sin Islam is also down on the causes of sin. This is why women are punished for inappropriate hijab and why Islam essentially institutionalises the idea that, "in that dress she was asking for it". This is generally seen as being anti-female but it's really anti-male. It's basically treating men like five year old kids told to mind the sweetie store counter for five minutes and not to eat anything.

Islam is fundamentally screwed over wrt sex. Many Islamic scholars (pretty much entirely men btw) recommend marriage as young as possible to "prevent sin". Qutb, the Godfather of modern salafi Islamism... Well look him up. He studied in the USA and a passage of his book about that reads like a shilling shocker about ladies of negotiable virtue. Guess what he was writing about. A Methodist Tea dance in early '50s Colorado. That is the mentality we are dealing with here. Qutb never married (he couldn't find a women "Islamic enough" in the USA or his native Egypt but just fulminated and now we see the end result in AQ. That is what happens when you have puritanical perverts with Allah on their side.